Hackneyed and coached

If there were a prize for an article that crammed the largest number of clichés into the smallest space, one strong candidate amongst many would be an informal interview with the actress Saffron Burrows that appeared in the Daily Telegraph Weekend section on 2^nd February 2008. So deficient in original thought is this offering that it is reminiscent of Dr Johnson’s famous remark about actors, “Punch has no feelings”.

Thus, if she had to be stranded in one place in the world, she chose London (fair enough) or New Zealand, “which has such a good woman running the country and foreign policies that protect it from alienation”. On a long-haul flight, she would like to sit next to Eleanor Roosevelt. She was saddened by Brokeback Mountain, because it “concludes on a note of devastation”. She wishes nuclear power had never been invented. She truly believes in “a world of democratic organization and access and integration for all”. She thinks this is the best century of all. She dislikes “any bombastic British figure who thinks that the climate is not warming and that women are really best in the kitchen, who denounces any form of progressive thought as ‘political correctness’”.

Whatever about the merits of any of her individual positions, to have them assembled in one personality is a work of narcoleptic genius. Strictly for connoisseurs. DT

The Crucifixion a cakewalk

Another classic - Manchester academic Terry Eagleton, one of the academic world’s few remaining self-confessed Marxists, says on a BBC programme, Lent Talks, to be broadcast later this month that Jesus’s crucifixion “wasn’t as bad as it’s been painted”, because Christ’s death took only hours instead of the more usual days. The scourging was “a blessing in disguise” because it hastened death. “All things considered, he got off pretty lightly” he added, before concluding with the equally sage observation that Christianity no longer concerns itself “with the obscene inequalities between rich and poor”. Eagleton’s commonsense and sense of proportion are as much in evidence as usual. DT

Screaming spires

Once planning permission had been given to build a large mosque in the centre of Oxford, to cater for Oxford’s estimated 6,000 Muslims, it was almost inevitable that sooner or later the mosque’s owners would request permission for the muezzins to broadcast their calls to prayer. It will be difficult for the council to refuse the latest request without attracting the inevitable accusations of ‘racism’, ‘Islamophobia’, and so forth.

The council’s cause (and the locals’ cause, as locals are overwhelmingly against the noisy proposal) is being hindered by the dhimmi Bishop of Oxford, who has said that locals should just “relax”. With such determined spiritual leadership, it is no wonder that the churches over which he and his ilk preside are getting emptier by the day. DT

Institute of Indoctrination

Appalling as this government is, it has at least realized that societies benefit if there is a public sense of patriotism - although it is unlikely it will do anything substantive to assist such a development. There are still too many Labour MPs and ministers who share views such as those promulgated by the University of London’s Institute of Education who, in a report issued on the 31st January said:

“The case for promoting patriotism in schools is weak. Patriotism is love of one's country, but are countries really appropriate objects of love? Loving things can be bad for us, for example when the things we love are morally corrupt. Since all national histories are at best morally ambiguous, it's an open question whether citizens should love their countries.” Patriotism, the authors felt, should be taught only as a “controversial issue”. Three-quarters of the 300+ London teachers quizzed by the Institute apparently felt that pupils ought to be “alerted to the dangers of patriotic sentiments”.

This report is only suggesting what is already the practice in most schools, so maybe we shouldn't get too annoyed by it. But while we're on the subject, couldn’t one argue that such activists’ preferred ideology, that of disliking and even attacking their own country, is the really “morally corrupt” ideology? DT